Derelict_Destruction

by Paul E. Cooley

  Besides, what was the point of juicing himself now? He was likely going to die in here, the pod ultimately becoming his very own Atmo-steel coffin. The O2 supply in his suit was nearly gone, the pod’s systems were more than a little damaged to begin with, and its O2 reserve sure as hell wasn’t going to be enough to get him to Pluto.

  He’d tried using comms on all channels, including block comms, but either no one was listening, or the pod wasn’t transmitting. From inside the pod, it was impossible for him to connect with external sources, and he imagined the pod’s comms arrays were damaged to begin with. No way to communicate. Perfect end to a perfect mission.

  Dickerson grunted and fingered his vibro blade. He would rather die in space, or with his veins open, than from suffocation. If it came to that, he’d open the escape pod using the emergency handle and drift out into the darkness. All he’d have to do after that was find the courage to take off his helmet. The temperature and the vacuum would take him quickly. Quickly enough, anyway.

  The creatures had followed the pod for a ways before giving up the chase. Maybe its acceleration was a little too much for the beasties, or he just wasn’t as interesting a morsel as he’d feared. Like most things that had happened, he’d never know. He’d die without knowing.

  The not knowing was the worst part about flying off into the darkness on his own. He’d never know if his squad had made it out of Mira. He’d practically thrown Kalimura into her pod and ejected her against orders. Maybe it saved her life. Maybe not. Either way, she got one of the pods that had passed inspection. Maybe her luck had been better than his. He certainly hoped so.

  He imagined Kalimura, Wendt, and Carb standing in the cargo bay, the three of them wondering where he was and if he was alive. Or maybe the entire crew had already given him up for dead. If the escape pod was as damaged as he feared it was, its transponder might not even be working. Trying to track the pod would be impossible for S&R Black. Hell, he’d probably be invisible to PEO’s sensor arrays too.

  “So fucked,” he whispered and chuckled. The laugh quickly died. Breathing that deeply hurt the hell out of his ribs. Once the last of his adrenal reserves had faded, the pain in his shoulder and chest had risen another notch or two. The swelling of tortured tissue made his nerves sizzle, and not in a good way. In another hour or so, every breath would be its own battle between the pain and the need to drag oxygen into his lungs.

  Maybe the escape pod would travel far enough to rendezvous with PEO. The station personnel could fire a tether, pull the pod into the station’s small cargo bay, open it, and find a suited corpse. Or, more likely, an open pod with a frozen corpsicle on the couch. One more dead marine. One more casualty from the Mira mission.

  “I hope they blow you the fuck up,” he drawled. The giant ship, a plague-ridden Trojan horse, needed to be blown to pieces before it could endanger the rest of humanity.

  Maybe it wouldn’t matter. He’d had a lot of time to think over the past hour, and he’d come to a conclusion: humanity was fucked. If you counted on the principles of evolution, then the creatures that had found their way into Sol System were possible. They seemed to share many of the same traits, despite their structural and locomotive differences. They had prey, they had predators, and they had a way to survive in a minimal eco-system. He would have been able to swallow all of that, if not for the beacon.

  The beacon’s existence suggested something more insidious. An intelligence greater, and far older, than humanity’s, had sent the beacon on a journey through the Milky Way to find Sol. Or maybe that was a coincidence and it was nothing more than humanity’s misfortune to discover it and their foolhardy nature to bring it back.

  Perhaps the beacon was meant to spread the lifeforms across the galaxy, maybe an innocent but misguided attempt to populate lifeless space. Or maybe there was another reason he was incapable of conceiving. Shit, trying to think like a superior mind was giving him a headache.

  Whomever, or whatever, had sent the beacon into their area might eventually come to see the fruits of their labors. Should any of humanity still be around, what would the visitors make of them? Would they destroy the humans to keep them from exploring the stars? Or was there some other use for humanity? Slavery? Food? He shivered as he remembered the pinecones’ silver, sharp talons and the horrifying starfish maws.

  Food seemed likely, although he couldn’t remember an instance in which the creatures tried to eat them. They did seem to like carbon dioxide, though, and that was something human beings produced simply by inhaling oxygen.

  “You have twenty minutes of suit atmosphere remaining,” the computer chimed in his headset.

  Twenty minutes. Great. After that, he’d be on whatever reserves the escape pod had. And according to the onboard computer, it wasn’t much. All he could do was breathe as shallowly as possible and wait for the onboard supply to dwindle to nothing. Maybe then he’d have the guts to open the hatch and kill himself.

  Dickerson leaned back in the couch and closed his eyes. Fuck it. Even if the alien species that had brought these creatures here showed up, he’d be long dead. Especially since it looked like that was going to happen very very soon.

  Something bumped against the side of the escape pod. Dickerson’s eyes opened at once. He connected to the escape pod cameras and then remembered they weren’t functioning. Cursing, he connected to the escape pod’s diagnostics and checked for heat signatures. The hull was intact, and cold cold cold. No heat sources. Nothing out there.

  The sound came again. He raised his head and stared at the escape pod’s ceiling. Whatever made the sound was above him. Something slid across the metal with a sickening screech. Were the creatures out there? A starfish trying to cut its way in and pluck a prize from the tin can?

  He fingered his blade again. He had more than enough ammo in his rifle to take care of a few exo-solar beasties, but going out in z-g while clutching a vibro blade and nothing else seemed much more heroic. If you were going to die anyway, might as well go out in a blaze of stupid machismo.

  A grin spread across his face as he pulled the blade from its sheath and held it in his right hand. The screeching sound repeated followed by a bump which rattled the pod. He stood from the couch, mag-locked his boots to the deck, and waited. His heartbeat and breathing had increased, making his remaining atmosphere drop by the second. It didn’t matter. He’d be dead any moment now.

  Something rattled against the hatch. He imagined one of the starfish out there, its body wrapped around the escape pod, talons scratching at the hatch seams, preparing to pop it open like a ration tin. Dickerson’s body fell into the SFMC hand-to-hand z-g stance. He sent a block command and the blade turned from a hard, flat-black piece of metal into a wavering, blurring piece of steel. He didn’t know if it could cut through their carapaces, but he hoped so. Just enough to make it remember him, if not kill it.

  Another scratch against the hull. This time, he was certain it was plucking at the hatch seam. In a few heartbeats, the hatch would burst loose and a dark thing, radiation pouring off its body, would reach in and drag him out. Dickerson tried to keep his breath slow even as his heart raced. His adrenaline reserves were gone. He had nothing left. All he could hope for now was to give the alien sonofabitch a good fight.

  A green light appeared on the escape pod’s staticky, mostly broken diagnostic screen. Dickerson blinked at it. Green? What the hell did green mean? Usually, it meant the pod was inside an oxygenated environment. Green.

  His legs began to shake as the hatch popped open and slid aside. Bright light poured in through the hatchway all but blinding him. Dickerson’s screens adjusted and he found himself looking at a bulkhead. A pair of hands, human hands, appeared at the left edge. A heartbeat later, Kalimura slid into view.

  Her face lit up with a smile, eyes looking almost teary. “You planning on stabbing me with that, marine?”

  Dickerson looked dumbly at the knife in his hands. He’d been clutching it so tightly that he had diffic
ulty flexing his fingers. The blade stopped vibrating, once again turning into a dead hunk of metal. “Corporal?”

  “Yup,” she said. Carb appeared next to her. Kalimura looked at the other squad-mate. “What do you think, Carb?”

  She shrugged. “I say we give him some fresh O2 and send him back into the void. Sounds like standard punishment procedure for disobeying a direct order.”

  Dickerson swayed slightly, his chest burning with pain. “Where am I?”

  Kalimura walked inside the escape pod, one hand held out to him. “Home,” she said.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  From less than 4,000 km away, PEO looked like a barely visible dark dot against Pluto’s solar reflection. The dot disappeared a moment later as it passed to the other side of the planet. Which is exactly where they needed to go. Dunn grimaced at the image.

  After getting Dickerson fluids, fresh nannies, and a ton of analgesics, they’d poured him into one of the infirmary beds and locked him up tight. He’d recover, in time, but until they entered stasis, he was going to be in some serious pain.

  The autodoc had mended the shoulder the best it could, but there wasn’t much to do besides wait for the nannies to do their work. The tiny bots would keep working on him even while he was in stasis, and by the time they reached Neptune, he’d be in much better shape. He might even be able to fight again.

  Kalimura and Carb were going to need the same amount of treatment once the company finished evacuating the Pluto Exo-Observatory. That was the main mission now.

  The sled was still on its trajectory, but several hours behind them. Nobel had fired up the engines and sent the ship through several acceleration cycles to get S&R Black up to a respectable speed, greatly cutting the time it would take for them to reach the dwarf planet. Getting out in front of the sled had been paramount. Especially considering what was following it.

  The two waves of creature had more or less intersected and had been joined by other KBOs. They’d passed several of the alien objects on their way to Pluto and each had ignored the ship, heading instead directly for the sled and the beacon.

  A few hours into the journey, Black had suggested they preemptively evacuate the PEO personnel. Dunn agreed immediately and now the scientists aboard the observatory had their personal belongings packed and ready to go. He imagined most of their “luggage” would be non-networked data packs filled with information and observations that hadn’t yet been uploaded. If his suspicions were correct, the chief astronomer would keep every instrument they had pointed at the incoming plague. That was information that may end up being paramount to their future survival. Depending, of course, on what the beacon did once it reached Pluto.

  Dunn was beginning to have reservations about that too. During the trip, he’d gone over the Trio’s rationale again and again. Something about it didn’t make sense, but that was true about most things related to this mission. The Trio had been playing games with him and even Black had commented to that effect.

  Now that his people were safe, those remaining that was, the questions kept piling up. No amount of rack time or meditation silenced them. He had ended up in the cockpit, reviewing every moment of footage they had from the trip to Mira as well as Kalimura’s squad feeds. Dickerson’s cam had been particularly interesting at the end.

  The marine probably didn’t even see what had been coming for him. He’d probably been focusing on the thing busting its way through the hatch. Hell, Dunn had missed it twice, knowing the images were somehow wrong, but unable to put his finger on it. And then he’d seen it.

  Darkness. That darkness again, like the waves radiating off the starfish, but much stronger. It had swallowed every photon of ambient light cast by Dickerson’s suit floods. Just before the marine closed the escape pod’s hatch, Dunn had seen something moving in the advancing abyss.

  The captain’s flesh rippled with goose flesh as he remembered the sight. The phenomenon of watching the light being consumed scared him on a primitive level. He’d never seen anything like it, and he imagined primitive humans had felt the same way while trapped in their caves before the advent of fire, just wondering when hostile animals would find the entrance and enter to eat them.

  S&R Black shuddered from another brake. Nobel and Black had fluctuated the thrusters, giving them precise attitude adjustments while at the same time slowing the ship. This was wasting a lot of fuel, but it probably didn’t matter. They had time to refuel at PEO. Time to refuel, stow their “guests,” and get S&R Black underway. He’d asked Black for a supply inventory they could loot and he had that prepared too. He’d send two marines inside the station to purloin both medical supplies and printer material reserves. It wasn’t much, but it would help.

  Regardless, they were heading back to Neptune as soon as he could manage it. He had absolutely no intention of being around when the beacon hit Pluto.

  They’d done what they could. So far, the sled hadn’t detected anything to make it change its trajectory. As long as the sled didn’t modify its course or encounter an object that put its flightpath in danger, there was little to nothing S&R Black could do but wait.

  The sled was still outrunning the creatures. They wouldn’t be around when it hit either. Once the beacon hit Pluto, what would they chase? S&R Black would be the last hunk of flying metal that had come in contact with the beacon. Would they follow the ship to Neptune?

  The idea was yet another that kept him examining every frame of film while his command crew slept in shifts. Kalimura’s squad, those not in the infirmary, had headed to the rack as soon as the ship finished its last acceleration burn. That had been an order.

  Just a few more hours and they’d all be in stasis, sleeping for two weeks while the ship traveled to Neptune space. Normally, he didn’t look forward to floating like artificial beef in simulated gravy, which is how he felt any time he entered a stasis pod. At least until the drugs kicked in. It was never a long wait, but it always seemed to last an eternity.

  This time? He’d be happy to climb in. At least then his brain would be able to stop attempting to find answers to all the questions he had. He doubted anyone on the ship wasn’t ruminating over the events of the past 24 hours, even as they slept.

  The dot became larger, the station’s shape no longer amorphous, but concrete and well-defined. The ship shuddered again.

  “How many more brakes, Oakes?”

  “Five, sir. Then we’ll be slow enough on the approach. All attitude thrusters from then on.”

  “Good. Let’s get our people out of bed.”

  *****

  Light duty. The autodoc had sentenced both Kali and Carb to light duty. Dickerson? Bed rest. As in real bed rest, no excuses, no extenuating circumstances, no argument.

  She and Carb stood near the cargo bay doors. The ship had already docked, S&R Black attached to the station by an ancient umbilicus. She was surprised it had even worked. The scientists here certainly operated on a shoe-string budget. Worse than SFMC, she thought.

  Nine scientists, two support engineers. Eleven extra people walking on board carrying satchels and not much else. S&R Black had more than enough stasis pods, especially now they’d lost two marines and Gunny was in medical stasis, and there was ample space in the cargo bay for the group’s possessions.

  The PEO personnel, every one of them, looked shell-shocked and terrified. Well, all but one. Nobilis Reed couldn’t stop talking, and his face burned with manic excitement. She wondered how long it would be before someone shot him with a tranq. And considering it was his own people he wouldn’t leave alone, Kali would happily lend them a stun flechette.

  Wendt and Murdock appeared in the umbilicus corridor, a magnetic lift gliding ahead of them. A stack of supply crates covered its surface, their bottoms mag-locked to the lift as well as to one another. The captain had said they had a few supplies. Kali grinned. She’d known from the inventory list it was going to be a lot more than Dunn had bargained for.

  Apparently, the staff h
ad decided to offer up their ration store, medical supplies, and spare parts. All of them, apart from Dr. Reed, appeared to understand they likely wouldn’t be returning to Mickey. The old observatory might survive the creatures’ approach, and it might not, but she had the feeling none of its staff would venture back where the frightening, dangerous creatures could be. Hell, why would anyone come back here?

  Kali used her block to scan the barcodes on the crates and matched them with the inventory list. One more load, and they’d be good to go.

  “You think the sled is going to make it?” Carb asked.

  Kali minimized her block HUD and made eye contact with her squad-mate. “I don’t know. I trust Nobel and Black to have gotten everything right on that account. But with the incoming KBOs?” She shook her head. “No telling.”

  Carb held a hand to her face and yawned loudly. “I need to sleep for a week.”

  The corporal grinned. “You’re about to get nearly two weeks of it.”

  “Yeah,” Carb agreed, “but it’s not the same. You wake up covered in fluid, sticky, and in desperate need of a shower.”

  She thought of saying something in response to that, but didn’t. Kali just chuckled instead. “Regardless, we’ll be home soon enough.”

  Wendt and Murdock offloaded the supplies and headed back for the last batch. Copenhaver dutifully went through them and carried each crate to a secured rack inside the cargo bay. Kali glanced at her and the private smiled. Nothing could faze that woman.

  “Dickerson’s going to be out of it for a while,” Carb said. Her flat voice was both matter of fact and a little sad.

  Kali nodded. “Ribs. Shoulder. And whatever else he broke on Mira. The nannies will have him mostly fixed up before we reach Neptune.”

  “Not Gunny, though.”